


Bright Side

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Gen, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 03:01:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Jessica gets a Halloween job. She may or may not regret this.





	Bright Side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kameiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kameiko/gifts).

"Jessica Jones?" 

"No," Jessica said, more or less on autopilot. She looked up and saw a guy standing just inside her half-open door in a suit, which pretty much narrowed it down to "process server" or "lawyer." Neither option made her regret her instinctive denial. Although he did look vaguely familiar in a way she couldn't quite put her finger on. 

Suit Bro hesitated. "Danny Rand's friend Jessica Jones?"

"Also no, definitely no," Jessica said, but she'd finally figured out where she knew him from, which was TV and the newspapers. She narrowed her eyes and added, "Why is a billionaire CEO in my office? This rarely ends well."

_"Your_ office," Ward Meachum said, and Jessica thought, _shit._

"Yes, okay, fine, I'm Jessica Jones, what do you want?"

Meachum's mouth twisted in the kind of way that people do when they're trying not to smile. "May I?" he said, reaching for the chair in front of her desk, and without waiting for a response, straightened it and sat in it. Jessica rested her chin in her hand and watched him squirm. Served him right: that chair was the extra-uncomfortable "rude customer" chair. If they asked nicely or waited for her to offer, they got the comfortable chair from the bedroom.

"What's in this cushion, gravel?" Meachum said.

Yes, actually. Apparently he hadn't discovered the thumbtacks yet. (Malcolm had tried to throw out that chair three times on the flimsy pretext that it was "bad for business" and "scares people off." She kept bringing it back, because that meant it was working.)

"Were you going to tell me why you're in my office?"

"Right," he said, trying to sit straight, and wincing. Apparently he'd found at least one of the thumbtacks. "Danny gave me your name. I'm Ward Meachum, by the way."

"Yes, I know, you're on TV all the time." She'd have to remember to "thank" Danny later. Although ... hmm. Rich dude who apparently wanted to hire her. Maybe this wasn't the worst thing that could possibly happen to her. Still, it didn't do to show weakness with that sort. "You still haven't gotten around to what you want."

"I need someone to provide security for an event. Danny said you're reliable."

Jessica snorted and didn't bother to touch _that_ one. "And you don't already have a dozen security companies on retainer?"

"Sure I do. But this is a little different, and anyway, I want someone low-key, who doesn't have a neck wider than their head."

Jessica gave him a level look and ran a hand up and down in the air in front of herself. "This fits the bill, huh?"

"It's only for four hours on the evening of the 31st, and I'll pay you well." He leaned back in the chair and smiled. Huh, she hadn't known he had that setting. "Look ... I'm not trying to trick you or anything like that. It's a fun little charity event and I need some low-key security, but I don't want professional security because the place is going to be full of kids."

"It's going to be what, now."

"It's an indoor trick-or-treating event for low-income kids that Danny set up and then ..." He sighed. "... left me to organize. All I need is someone around to step in if anyone looks like they're getting out of line, and I don't want to use our regular security because it's not security that I need, exactly. It's more like community policing."

"Look, even if I wanted to do this, which I don't, I'm a P.I. I'm not trained for this. I'm really, seriously not trained for this."

"Do you carry a gun on the job?"

"No," Jessica said, so caught off guard by the question that she was startled into honesty.

"That's why I want you." Meachum leaned forward and clasped his hands between his knees. "You want to know what Danny told me, exactly?"

"No," Jessica said. "But I'm sure you're going to tell me, so go ahead."

"He said ..." Meachum smiled again, a brief smile that was warm in a reflective kind of way, which Jessica found interesting enough to file away quietly against his earlier coolness. "He said he thought it'd be good for me. And he wanted me to hire you for the security part because he thought it'd be good for you, but I wasn't supposed to tell you that."

Jessica looked at him for a long moment, and sighed very deeply. Under some other circumstances, she might have thought he was trying to manipulate her, but that was just so incredibly _Danny_ that she couldn't find it in her not to believe him. "Are you sure he's not trying to set us up?"

Meachum barked a startled laugh. "No. I mean, I don't think so. It does kind of sound like it, put that way, doesn't it? I don't think he's that devious, honestly."

Jessica rubbed the point between her eyes that was starting to develop a Danny-Rand-related headache. "What were you thinking about paying for this?"

"Name your usual rate for an evening's security work," Meachum said immediately. "I'll double it."

She had been fully prepared to refuse if he offered her something stupidly over the top ("quadruple your usual rate and two month's rent") but this was ... well ... reasonable. "For four hours of having toddlers puke on my shoes."

"Hopefully there'll be a minimum of that. Look," he said, starting to lean back in the chair and then thinking better of it as another thumbtack apparently made itself known, "if it helps, you can look at it this way: you'll be the only other person at the entire event who wants to be there as little as I do, and unlike me, you'll be getting paid for it."

"That ... is an unexpectedly appealing selling point. Okay, fine," she said. "Payment in advance."

"Check okay?"

"I expect you're good for it," she said, and was somehow unsurprised when (with another wry smile) he pulled out a checkbook. Jessica started to reach for her jar of pilfered gas-station and bank pens, but he reached into another pocket and took out an honest-to-fuck fountain pen, and she gave up. Rich people. Jesus.

"Your rate?" he said, and she gave it to him with some generous extra padding. He scribbled a check and passed it across to her. She found that he had doubled it as promised, and also added a bit of _additional_ padding. She pondered whether to be insulted by this, decided not to, and swiped it out of sight.

"Okay, fine, you've got yourself four hours of security guarding. Tell Rand I'll get him back for it later."

"Oh trust me, he already knows that," Meachum said. "Er .. can I ask you one more question?"

"Sure," Jessica said, in the relatively good mood that came from knowing she was going to be able to pay her rent this month.

"... what in the hell is this chair _made_ out of?"

***

She got there half an hour early, because if she was going to do a job, she was (to her own annoyance) going to do it right. The event was being held in a rental venue that was, somewhat to her surprise, more meeting-hall-esque than ballroom-esque, and it was being decorated by a number of people who looked more like volunteers than Rand staffers. Or, at least, like people who understood children. Things were at kid height, and the kid-friendly activities actually looked friendly to four-foot-high people with fruitfly attention spans.

Jessica had developed, to her own regret, a well-honed eye for child-related charity events during her years living with Dorothy Walker. This one actually looked like a decent one. Clearly Meachum had delegated, because he did not strike her as a person who had the slightest idea how to put one of these together.

She located him at the far end of the room, with a brisk and efficient-looking blonde person showing him two different sizes of colorful, crinkly plastic bags. "Yes, whatever you think is best, Katie," he said as Jessica approached, and gave her a little wave, at which point Jessica realized that he was dressed in costume, and came to a screeching halt. He was wearing a black cape with a red interior and a tuxedo. Even without the addition of makeup or fangs, it was clear what he was supposed to be. (Or at least the general ballpark, somewhere on a vampire-to-Satan trajectory.)

Her Uber had navigated through hordes of early trick-or-treaters, and she still hadn't thought of putting a costume on. 

Blonde Katie hurried off on whatever errand her boss had just given her. "If I have to wear a costume, I'm raising my rates," Jessica said.

Meachum raised his eyebrows at her. "By how much?"

She was going to _kill_ Danny Rand. Luckily she knew plenty of places around town to hide a body. "It depends on what you're going to try to put me in."

"Look ... come on, can we walk and talk?" He was already walking. She caught up. "If you wear what you're wearing right now, kids are going to ask you all evening long what you are." He glanced at her. "Which is probably going to be 'Catwoman' or 'Gangster' or possibly 'Carmen Sandiego.'"

"You're working my last nerve and I've only been here for five minutes."

"So," he went on, "put on something simple and easy, like cat ears, and then they'll know what you are at a glance and won't have to ask. Bingo, fifty percent fewer questions."

Jessica gave him a sideways look, and her assessment of who was in actual charge of the event rearranged itself. "You're an expert, are you?"

"More like a veteran," he said, with a grimace. "I mean, you probably know how we grew up."

"Who's we, and why would I?"

"From Danny?"

"Who I barely know," Jessica said.

"The way he talks about you, you're besties."

"He probably also thinks he's best friends with his dentist, the corner newsstand guy, and the guy selling knockoff Rolexes on the other corner."

"Okay ... point." Meachum paused to point a lost-looking volunteer toward Blonde Katie, then turned back to Jessica. "Okay, so, basically my sister and I -- and Danny -- practically grew up at events like this. Not exactly like this, obviously. But any sort of photo op you could drag a kid to. I developed what you might call a connoisseur's eye."

Jessica laughed. She couldn't help it.

"Yes, I know," he said, with a slightly bitter sideways smile. "Not the corporate image, exactly."

"No, it's not that, it's --" A piece of her past that she didn't hand out to strangers. She took a breath, and said instead, "Where can I pick up some damn cat ears?"

***

She didn't have fun. Goddammit. She _didn't._

But as it turned out, there really wasn't much for a security guard in kitty-cat ears to do at an event that was composed almost entirely of kids under the age of ten and their parents, grandparents, or earnestly attentive big siblings. She redirected a few lost and crying pipsqueaks to the lost-kids table, and otherwise she took turns filling in for staffers at various tables and handing out handfuls of mini candy bars, stickers, or volunteer-made gluten-free treats to delighted kids holding up colorful bags.

It was just ... she wasn't used to people being happy to see her. Even if those people were only three feet high. And there was something unexpectedly gratifying about spending an entire evening handing out candy to people who were, for the most part, absolutely thrilled just to get a handful of mini Snickers, and their equally delighted moms or aunties or granddads, who spent all their time grinning at her and telling her "Thank you, miss!" (or gracias, doh je, cảm ơn bạn, etc). It was -- well --

It was nice.

Even if the noise level in the room was unbearable. Eventually she went looking for a door leading anywhere that was _less fucking noisy,_ and found one leading out to a quiet side street where she leaned against the wall for a minute and dug out the flask tucked into the inside pocket of her jacket before realizing she wasn't alone. There was a crinkling noise in the dark, a movement, and a stranger in a cape and ... oh.

"Meachum," she said.

"Hiding?" he said.

"You're one to talk."

"Fuck Danny anyway," Ward said, but he was grinning at her, a flash of white teeth in the dark.

"Right, absolutely." She offered him her flask, but he raised a hand. "I don't have germs," she said.

"It's not you, it's me. Recovering addict."

"Oh. Uh, sorry."

"No apologies needed." He smiled faintly and held out the bag that was the source of the rustling sound. "Mini Mars bar?"

"You're hiding out here sneaking candy? Seriously?" she said, and took one. "Hey, Meachum, can I tell you a secret?"

"Uh, sure."

She tipped her head back against the side of the building. "Don't tell anybody, but this is the first goddamn time I haven't hated one of these things. And yeah, I've been to more than a few."

"Yeah?" he said, a voice in the dark.

"You know Trish Walker? Trish Talk?"

"Yeah, sure, who doesn't?"

Jessica waved a hand, encompassing ... she wasn't even sure what. "My sister."

"Ah," he said, and there was a moment's silence, punctuated only by more subtle crinkling.

"So basically I'm saying this one's a pretty good one," Jessica said. "As these things go. Not the worst way to spend a Halloween."

"Ha. I'll pass it along to Katie," he said. "She did the work."

"Mmm. I knew you were a delegator."

He laughed quietly in the dark and held out another Mars bar. She took it, and washed it down with a swallow of cheap bourbon.

"Hey, Meachum."

"Mmm?"

Jessica leaned closer. "Next time you come by the office, I'll get you the comfortable chair out of the back instead of the people-I-hate chair."


End file.
